“And I am trying like hell to get the Islanders to make Barclays Center their new hockey home,” says Ratner, sweeping his hand across the big arena where workers in cherry-picker buckets installed acoustic panels on the domed ceiling as others installed black seats. “They will play a pre-season game here against the Devils.”

If that preseason game doesn’t wind up canceled by a lockout, it’ll make for an intriguing audition for the NHL there. The one issue that sticks out is how it only holds roughly 14,500 for hockey and the quality of the sight lines has come into question. If it all plays out well with minimal issues, Isles owner Charles Wang will have a heck of an option to play in his hopes to keep the Islanders in New York.

For those keeping track, the new Barclays Center will be less than 30 miles west of Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush in Brooklyn. We’re talking about a 45 minute drive—it’s close, but 45 minutes can be the difference between a fan going to a game and catching it on TV. Just ask fans in Arizona the difference between an arena in Scottsdale, downtown Phoenix, and Glendale. Fans in the Eastern regions of Nassau and Suffolk counties would potentially see their commute to games increased. But that’s only part of the story.

A move would put the Islanders both closer to media capital of North America as well as closer to fans that commute to Manhattan on a daily basis. Sure, the arena is further away from the suburban roots of Uniondale—but at least it’s moving in the right direction.

Cue the “there aren’t even 14,000 Islanders fans” jokes since the Islanders averaged a league-worst 11,059 last season. For a bit of perspective, despite the Phoenix Coyotes’ well-publicized attendance problems, they still averaged 1,100 more fans per game. The Thrashers averaged 2,400 more fans and they relocated the minute the season ended. But as the Winnipeg situation has shown us, the NHL is willing to place a team into smaller buildings provided that the team fills all of the available seats.

On the flip side, it’s important to note that 14,000 would be the smallest venue in the league. Even if they sold-out the new building every single night, they still would have had the 4th worst attendance—not exactly a ton of upward mobility for a team who hopes to be on the rise.

Regardless, Barclays Center officials meeting with the NHL is the first step towards making the new arena a viable option for the Islanders when their lease expires in 2015. But would the Islanders just be trading one arena problem for another?